New Year, New Post
The sound of a radio dial tuning in.
Intro: Until I Found You by Stephen Sanchez.
A young man in his 30s exits his car outside a shopping mall parking lot. It is late afternoon. The sky is grey and there is a sprinkling of rain overhead. He walks down a hundred yards of asphalt, being careful not to step into the numerous puddles of water.
Finally, he makes it to the sidewalk and the entrance of the mall. The sliding glass doors open for him and he walks inside. He is greeted by a beautiful canopy of glass overhead, enclosing the mall, held aloft one hundred feet above ground by oxidized green copper trusses. The mall is full of hustle bustle. There is a bit of cheer in the air, if cheer is measured by purchases and transactions. Kids tug and pull at their mother’s coats, begging for caramel dipped apples and chocolate covered pretzels. Others walk out of the mall, their faces obscured by boxes of wrapped gifts.
The man walks through the hall of retail and at the end of the corridor turns left onto the escalator. He stands on the escalator step, observing the frenetic masses scurry about below as he gradually rises above the fracas. Arriving at the top he steps off and sees a sign - what he has come for. He has arrived. A beacon of light, guiding all the lost, weary, and hungry travelers - Auntie Anne’s Pretzels.
A smile begins to form on his lips. He can feel the warmth of the hearth and the smell of fresh baked pretzels wafting over and entering in his nostrils, and invigorating his spirit with new strength and hope. His shoulders straighten and his step picks up. He rounds the corner of the escalator and steps in line.
But after five minutes he has only moved up one spot. There are only two people ahead of him but only one person twisting pretzels and she is also the cashier. He can no longer wait. He will come back. He steps out of line, forgiving his position. He will return one day for another fresh pretzel. But today, it is grey and dreary and rainy outside and he has not had exercise in days. Now inside the mall he will walk for exercise in lieu of the appetizing, temporal prize he had sought.
Inside, protected from the elements, he wanders these corridors. The blood begins to flow. The lethargy that propelled him on the couch in his home begins to dissipate. He is enlivened by the people around the mall. But his strength; oh his strength is sapping. He has not used these muscles in such a way. He feels a fatigue in his legs, a weakness in his knees, and a burning hole in his stomach. Can he make it? How far has he walked since Auntie Anne’s?
He reaches the end of the mall and takes the elevator down. Once on the first floor he begins to think to himself, “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.”
Arriving at the center of the mall he sees others sitting on the benches and lazing against the couches under the canopy of glass. He wishes to himself that he too had a seat. He cannot make it out to the parking lot. Not with the wind battering him on his way inside, and without sustenance to carry him several hundred more feet to the exit of the mall, and then another hundred yards of wide open asphalt plain.
He sees an empty chaise and as he approaches he sees a familiar face.
It is his mall buddy. He is adorned with nicely shined, brown leather shoes with gold colored buckles. He wears neatly pressed cerulean blue pants. He wears a cream colored flannel shirt with light brown stripes. In his left shirt pocket is a pack of cigarettes but he never smells of smoke. Topping this all off he wears a heavy black coat.
It was a lazy summer day when the young man first encountered the old man. The young man had been sitting on a chaise, reverting between reading news on his phone and giving his eyes a break to people watch. After an hour, he noticed the old man was still sitting there the whole time. He sat simply, comfortably, with a wry smile on his face. His smile seemed to grow larger any time children ran past his feet. Yet no one ever approached him and he had no phone, no newspaper, no book to pass the time into. None of these children must be his grandchildren as no one ever came up to speak to him, thought the young man. The old man must be here alone.
The young man put down his phone and engaged in conversation with him and learned more about his story. And Ted shared his story. Ted was an 82 year-old widow. Ted spent his afternoons at the mall, sitting on the couches in the mall plaza and watching people go about their life. His wife died four years ago. They used to amble the mall together and window shop and people shop. And now he had spent the last four years walking these corridors without her. Now that she was no longer here he wandered these halls alone. Once upon a time, before the pandemic, he would meet with other senior citizens at the mall and they would bring their newspapers and discuss current affairs over pastries. But as the pandemic hit everyone stayed home, and even though the mall reopened none of his friends came back out.
So he was left to sit here and muse in his thoughts during his weekly sojourns to the mall, without his friends, but surrounded by crowds of people. That was Ted’s story.
As the young man approaches the chaise he sees Ted’s silver hair emanating between the tropical banana leaf plants. A smile opens on his face at this familiar sighting and he walks over and plops himself on the couch next to Ted.
“Hey Stranger!” he says.
“Hey there! You’re wearing a similar coat as me!” says Ted, pointing at the young man and speaking in a Stan Lee-esque voice.
The young man looks down at his coat and replies, “I guess you’re right. That must be why I’m sitting next to you and why we’re couch buddies!”
“I haven’t seen you in a while. I was wondering when you’d come back,” says Ted.
And the young man updates him on his life, where he has gone, what he has done since last they met, and makes a comment about how the mall was quite empty last time and now was brimming with people. Ted motions to the center plaza of the mall and mentions how they had just finished taking down the Christmas decorations yesterday, the bottom half of the tree being removed. Ted talks about the trip he went on or rather didn’t take over Christmas. Spending time at the airport waiting to go to New Mexico with his daughter, the flight being pushed out and then even more delayed. And how finally he went home but his daughter decided to continue driving on to New Mexico after dropping him off home. And the ordeal it took to drive down there. And how he spent time at home, not wanting to eat alone, not wanting to turn on the silly tube. It was all a bunch of crap on the silly tube these days and it was no fun to listen to people talk on the news all night. So the best place for him to be was here.
“Speaking of which, I think it’s time I grab me a samwich now. I like to eat by 5.”
The young man looked at his watch; it was approaching 5 pm.
“You’re right,” he said. “I too like to eat around 5. Gives me time to digest before I sleep.”
“You know it.” Ted said, and got up and extended his hand back to the young man. “Til next time.”
And they shook hands and departed.
Now it was the young man’s time to be alone again. He people gazed until not long afterwards his stomach began to grumble. It was his time to ruffle up the energy to get up and get food. Time to resume the quest for the pretzel!
Intermezzo: Spring 1 by Max Richter
Tonight I read Ana’s last post. It was like, well, reading her, hearing her speak. But a different person for she was narrating from the past. She never shared many details of her past. But in reading her journal it was insightful. After Ana left I wanted something handwritten to read from yet I had nothing. In seeing this I see why I have nothing written of hers preserved for me. There is nothing now written that would help me.
In these journals I see so much of our similarities and see once again oh how she did listen to me. How she did start to write. And once again, proof that we both could not marry until we were well suited for each other, well salted.
I saw that she swung from one end of the pendulum to the other. But neither was I spared from the variegations of life. We each had tender spots and mood swings in which we hoped not to face or let the light of day see. And she admitted it in her own writing.
Though I did not know everything about her, we knew each other. We each, perhaps ashamed of our own sins, forgave each other, knowing we each had a past full of sin. Though it was a deep shame and regret of what we had done individually in the past.
Yet in this single piece I see that until we could accept mercy and spiritual healing from above we could not wed. And once we were able to put aside all that easily entangles and encumbers and that which leaves us bruised and battered, then we could wed. Thee most beautiful day.
As if a foreshadow of things to come, we remembered very little of that day as it lay in our past. All the pictures were washed out, such was the vibrancy of the sun that poured out and washed upon us that day.
Outro: Prayin’ for Daylight by Rascal Flatts